Wolf Solent

From Waterloo Station to the small country town of Ramsgard in Dorset is a journey of not more than three or four hours, but having by good luck found a compartment to himself, Wolf Solent was able to indulge in such an orgy of concentrated thought, that these three or four hours lengthened themselves out into something beyond all human measurement.

A bluebottle fly buzzed up and down above his head, every now and then settling on one of the coloured advertisements of seaside resorts⁠—Weymouth, Swanage, Lulworth, and Poole⁠—cleaning its front legs upon the masts of painted ships or upon the sands of impossibly cerulean waters.

Through the open window near which he sat, facing the engine, the sweet airs of an unusually relaxed March morning visited his nostrils, carrying fragrances of young green shoots, of wet muddy ditches, of hazel-copses full of damp moss, and of primroses on warm grassy hedge-banks.

Solent was not an ill-favoured man; but on the other hand he was not a prepossessing one. His short stubbly hair was of a bleached tow-colour. His forehead as well as his rather shapeless chin had a tendency to slope backward, a peculiarity which had the effect of throwing the weight of his character upon the curve of his hooked nose and upon the rough, thick eyebrows that overarched his deeply sunken grey eyes.

The door had not closed behind her for many minutes when the elderly servant entered, carrying a silver tray, upon which was a plate of Huntley and Palmer’s oaten biscuits and a decanter of sherry. Wolf had poured himself out as many as three glasses of this excellent wine and had swallowed nearly all the biscuits before Miss Gault returned. She found him stroking Mark, the black cat.

Her appearance in hat and cloak was just as peculiar as before, but more distinguished; and Wolf soon found out, when presently they passed the front of the Abbey, where several townspeople greeted her, that the power of her personality was fully appreciated in Ramsgard.

Their way to the cemetery took them straight past the workhouse. This building was on the further side of the road; but Solent was unable to restrain an impulse to turn his head towards it. The edifice was rather less gloomy than such erections usually are, owing to the fact that some indulgent authority had permitted its façade to be overgrown with Virginia creeper.

He found himself reducing his pace so that he might familiarize himself with every aspect of that heavy, sombre building behind iron gates. As he lingered he became suddenly aware that his companion had slipped her gloved hand upon his arm. This natural gesture, instead of pleasing him or rousing his sympathy, made him feel curiously irritable. He quickened his pace; and her hand fell away so quickly that he might easily have supposed that light pressure to have been a pure accident.

They walked side by side now, with such swinging steps that it was not long before they were beyond the houses and out into what was almost open country.

Even at the very moment he was muttering an appropriate reply to this somewhat unusual greeting, and allowing his thoughts, below the surface of his words, to reflect how oddly the servants in King’s Barton behaved, Wolf became aware of the approach of an imposing personage coming down the long hallway towards them. This figure, limping very much and leaning upon a stick, was in evening-dress; and as he approached he muttered, over and over again, in a low, soft, satiny voice: “What’s this I hear, eh? What’s this I hear, eh? What’s this I hear, eh?”

The tall coachman, or gardener, or whatever he was, did not wait for his master’s arrival. With one quick glance at Solent and a final “Excuse me, Sir!” he vanished through a side-door, leaving Wolf to face his host without any official announcement.

“Mr. Solent? Very good. Mr. Wolf Solent? Very, very good. You received my letter and you came at once? Excellent. Very, very good.”

Uttering these words in the same low voice that made Wolf think of the unrolling of some great, rich bundle of Chinese silk, he offered his left hand to his visitor and kept his right still leaning upon the handle of the stick that supported him.

Ah, there she was!

Gerda lay supine, her arms outstretched, her cream-coloured hat clutched tight in one of her hands, her knees bare.

She waited till Wolf was so close that he could see that her eyes were shut. Then, catching the vibration of his tread upon the turf, she leapt to her feet and was off again, running like Atalanta, and soon vanishing from sight. Wolf pursued her; but he thought to himself, “I won’t run quite as fast as I could! She’ll better enjoy being caught if she has had a good race.”

As a matter of fact, so swift-footed was the damsel that by following this method of leisurely pursuit he soon lost her altogether. The hollow trench ran straight into the heart of a thick coppice which from this point outwards had overgrown the whole of the camp. Here, in the heavy undergrowth, composed of brambles, elder-bushes, dead bracken, stunted sycamores, and newly-budded hazels, all ordinary paths disappeared completely. All he could have done was to have followed obstinately the bottom of the trench; and that was so overgrown that it was unbelievable she should have forced a way there. But if he didn’t follow the trench, where the devil should he go? Where, under the sky, had she gone? “The earth hath bubbles as the water hath,” he quoted to himself, amused, irritated, and completely nonplussed. Teased into doing what he knew was the last thing calculated to bring her back, he began calling her name; at first gently and hesitatingly; at last loudly and indignantly.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that it was with quite a startled leap of the heart that he became conscious of hurried, uneven steps behind him. What kind of steps were they? They didn’t sound like the steps of a grown-up person⁠—either man or woman⁠—they were so light in the dark road. And yet somehow they didn’t resemble the footsteps of a child. Wolf became aware of an odd feeling of uneasiness. With all his habitual mysticism he was a man little subject to what are called psychic impressions. Yet on this occasion he could not help a somewhat discomfortable beating of his heart. The last thing he desired was to be overtaken by something unearthly on that pleasant Dorset road! Had the extraordinary phenomenon of the girl’s whistling unsettled his nerves more than he realized?

His first simple and cowardly instinct was to quicken his own steps. In fact, it was with a quite definite effort that he prevented himself from setting off at a run! What was it? Who was it? He listened intently as he walked; and this listening in itself induced him to diminish his speed rather than to increase it.

At last the mysterious maker of this uncertain wavering series of footsteps arrived close at his heels.

Wolf swung round, grasping his stick tightly. Nothing on earth could have prevented a certain strained unnaturalness in his voice as he challenged this pursuer.

“Hullo!” he cried.

There was no answer, and the figure came steadily along till it was parallel with him.

Then he did, in a rush of relief, recognize this nightwalker’s identity.

Even in the darkness he recognized that shabby, derelict personality he had seen in the street with Lob Torp the day before. It was the Vicar of King’s Barton!